...and that it prevents me from playing the game too. Any ideas for a fix? I've got cd tools (daemon/alch 120) off, yet I still get this error, "The blah, blah, could not be found, game will not continue" or whatever.

Atari has released a playable demo of a game called Crash Day. It's similar to Need for Speed: Most Wanted in many ways, but the aim is to destroy other cars with missiles and miniguns, or do insane stunts. It's quite fun and looks to have some potential - check out my screenies, thoughts and tweaks in this thread.

Now here is the warning part. Without meaning to be overly dramatic, the Crash Day demo uses the SecuROM copy protection system. This is highly annoying and may cause problems on your machine. You can either avoid installing the demo, or if you install it and then eventually want to uninstall it and remove SecuROM, including the 'SecuROM User Access' Service it installs in Windows, follow these steps:

Note: This Service may be recreated by one of your other SecuROM games, in which case you will have to keep it running to play them.

The following steps are very risky and only for people who are certain none of their currently installed games use or need SecuROM:

7. Go to \Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ and delete the SecuROM sub-directory.

8. Go to Start>Run and type "Regedit" (without quotes) and press Enter. Then find the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SecuROM] key and delete it if possible.

I am really annoyed at SecuROM as it is an intrusive system which causes a vast range of problems for legitimate users. I'm giving you a clear heads-up that it is on this demo, and that it may cause problems on your machine as it has for recent games like F.E.A.R.

yes cars deform, my car became banana shape after i kept trying to do sonic the hedgehog moves in the stunt arena thing.

game seemed semi fun but also not so much, reminded me of 1nsane in the driving bits(i loved that game <3) and like that phoenix bandits thing in the shooting bits, then like they chucked stunts in there because they had no other ideas.

Im sure fans of above/previous games will enjoy it though.

Worth the dl if you have the bandwith etc(took me like 3mins on 24mbit dsl so meh easy money)

Anyone else have a problem running the demo? Just after it installed, I go to run it and it comes up with a large, plain looking dialogue box saying: "A security module can not be activated. This program can not be executed."

Sounds like a Securom problem. Have you tried unhooking your disc drives? Not sure why a demo would have that problem, though.

I was really looking forward to this but the cheesy arcade physics make this a no-buy for me unless they add a mode with much, much more realistic physics(or someone makes a mod). There are some cool aspects to the game but the arcade physics are way too hokey. I was really looking forward to the track editor too.

Well I guess. The story and the gameplay are inextricably linked in my brain, is all.

At the end of the trailer, the model of the car looks smashed and BENT! Almost in a curve.

True, but that was the ONLY part of the trailer where damage appeared to be anything other than altered textures (albeit rather nicely done). My assumption was that maybe they just switched models from "car" to "destroyed carcass" if one was completely demolished like that.

There's model deformation. When i tested it out i managed to get my car to have a front that bent to the left and a rear that bent to the right. Roofs can be damaged, parts of cars can come off. Basically the car can be destroyed easily.

Well that all sounds more promising. I'm surprised that this wasn't visible in the trailer, though... I don't think they've had much time to make significant changes since then, and cars take some heavy hits that really ought to crumple some of the body, I would have thought.

Anyway, not to say this would be a real problem or anything. I think Trackmania (which I love) is probably its closest competition in general, and that has no damage or car-car collisions at all

Not bad. Picked the gamepad right up...it is set to "Hard", you can see it in the options, but you can't change it (there's a lot of text based files, but scanning a few of them, I don't see a way to change it...yet).

It talks about X number of cars and tracks, but they don't show much. They should have shown more of the different types of events you could do...

I'd pay $20 or $30 for it...but no more than that, based on what I've seen so far...if they update the demo to show more of what it can do, they might have a hit on their hands...

Malakai - I read somewhere the demo is set on "Hard" mode.. that would explain it.

thats a roger. I've heard the same thing.

Tim says:

This demo isn't very good. I would say that the Interstate series including the various expansions are infinitely better. To use this game and those games in the same sentence is a huge disservice actually. Its talk like this that leads to games like Crashday.

This demo isn't very good. I would say that the Interstate series including the various expansions are infinitely better. To use this game and those games in the same sentence is a huge disservice actually. Its talk like this that leads to games like Crashday.

There's model deformation. When i tested it out i managed to get my car to have a front that bent to the left and a rear that bent to the right.

Roofs can be damaged, parts of cars can come off. Basically the car can be destroyed easily.

Only thing i didnt like was i found the game to be damn hard. Now it may be because i suck, but i found the stunt arenas damn hard to get any form of decent points and the deathmatch mode i just got ruined in it.